I am sitting in my hotel in Hawaii lamenting the lack of sci-fi Friday on my hotel's cable network. This, despite the exhortations of the nice man who dropped off my loaf of complimentary banana bread--I am very fond of any hotel that gives you a loaf of banana bread--and seemed concerned that I was sitting in my room alone. "Go. Walk on the beach." Eh, the beach at sunset is overrated. Besides, when compared to the beaches in Mexico, which were more wide open and beautiful, the beaches in the tourist section of Waikiki are not that appealing. Of course if I could get away to the beaches that makaidiver has been to, I might change my tune. I just seem to get headachy any time I walk around outside, and am disheartened that it is only chain restaurants within easy walking distance of my hotel. Maybe it has to do with all of the vacationers, who are with their loved ones while I am all alone. My unhappiness here all probably ties back to the fact that I didn't clean my house before I left and so don't feel at ease on this trip.

Anyhow, this post is really about my groovy new shoes. Here is the page at zappos, although I paid only of a fraction of the price listed: http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/7415220/c/35554.html And I learned something interesting about them when I went to get the link: "The Mobius concept for a shoe was found through transforming the frame of Mies van der Rohes' iconic Barcelona chair." I did like their neat design, the cut out platform wedge, their incredible comfort, and the fact that they are orange, my color of the moment. I have people stopping me on the street to get the brand name, and have received tons of compliments.

Anyway, I will try to count my blessings--banana bread! cool shoes!--and ignore the fact that I am not enjoying Hawaii and am currently being deprived of Battlestar Galactica.

I have managed to bring my bad electronics karma that has haunted me into the office, and my computer at work has crashed for the third time in two weeks. I suspect that this time I am not just going to get new memory, but a whole new computer. I can do e-mail remotely from the intern's desk, but not any database work, so I have turned into the master of delegation as I am leaving for Honolulu tomorrow. Boss is getting work, in addition to assistant. This is one of the two big conferences of the year so busy, busy, busy, but the authors are nice, and hey, Hawaii! Even if I just end up walking from meeting to meeting under the palm trees. My only problem is that this is the first hot weather conference I have been to in a few years, and my summer big important editor clothes are sparse.

Other than that, feeling dissatisfied with every aspect of my life. Much like when I hate everyone--except all of you lovely people!--I think that this is a signal that I have a bad attitude, rather than things going particularly badly. Sunshine will no doubt help.

"Doctoral candidate at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University Daniel H. Wilson's HOW TO SURVIVE A ROBOT UPRISING, tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion, in a major deal, by Justin Manask at Intellectual Property Group, on behalf of Laurie Fox at the Linda Chester Literary Agency."

In other news, busy, busy, busy, Mom visit, crazy, busy, busy. I will try to update very soon.

I know I have posted more today than I have in 3 years, but I was cleaning out my e-mail and came across spam with the headline "Sleeping with the pool boy?" Intrigued, I clicked through. It wasn't porn, it was a service to clean out your hard drive.

Does this not seem like a very fourthy fourth to anyone else? Admittedly, I am working today--apparently economists hate freedom and democracy--but when I went to run some errands, it seemed like everyone was shopping rather than bbq'ing.

Interestingly enough, I wanted to separate out the mysteries from the nonmysteries, but looking over the following books I realize that most of these are mysteries in every sense except for the mass market dimensions.

I am typing to you on my new laptop. Well, new to me. I went crazy this week on ebay, and won three laptops of which I plan to keep one. The first seller was a fraudster, but a really stupid fraudster—he put a fake name on ebay, but his real name on his paypal account, so he was easy to find, particularly as he likes to frequent message boards. I am still waiting to find out if I am going to get me money back, but if not, I know who this guy is, his website, his blog, the fact that he is married with two children, the fact that he lives in Albany, Ga., his street address, the fact that he works in tech support in telecom, six of his e-mail addresses, that he owns a Mac, that he lives across from a Budweiser plant, his ISP, and the fact that he is six feet tall. He also might be Baptist, but I can’t confirm that. I finally got him to respond after I sent e-mails to his real name on all six e-mails accounts, and he cracked. I should be able to do something with all this information, even if it is only filing a claim in small claims court (I am not sure how that works in interstate transactions) or setting the cops on him if he doesn’t repay me. I can also become a troll on his blog, which might be fun for a while, but which I suspect would bite me in the ass, karmically.

My new computer that I am keeping is a souped-up refurbished Dell. Huge memory (750), fast processor (1.6) , and although it needs a bigger hard drive (only 20), more than enough for what I need. I also won a less powerful Dell which I am reselling. I ended up winning two because I put in $450 bids on both, left for the night, and found out in the morning that I had won. They finished at 1:00 in the morning PST, so basically, it was too late or too early almost everywhere in the world. I have never sold anything on e-bay, so we’ll see how it goes.

Now for the next installment of 50 in 05. I really was prompted to do update this because the pile of books I planned to document got really big and I am doing spring cleaning (problem with living in California—you don’t ever go from freezing to spring, so nature never prompts you to clean under your refrigerator. Mine is disgusting, by the way.) Anyhow, this post will be mysteries—no spoilers, just general impressions. Plus I will start with a nonfiction book that manages to incorporate urban planning and psychos. ubercooley, don’t get all excited, it’s not about Robert Moses, although I know that the urban planning aspect will make your heart beat a little faster.

I just got back from my 36-hour trip to Washington, DC for my big economics book launch. The launch and the board meeting was hugely successful, and I think it was great for the series, plus I got some new projects. Everything else about the trip was disastrous. My flight out was ok, except the dinner I brought (they don't serve food anymore) leaked in my bag before I got on the flight and I ended up throwing it out before I got on the plane. The flight itself was ok, and John Kerry was in first class, so I spent the trip trying to identify which people on the plane were federal marshalls. I got in at 1 in the morning to discover that they had overbooked my hotel, and they had to find me a new one. I ended up staying in the guest house of Gaulludette University, which is an excellent college for the deaf, way out in the suburbs, which was nice, but I got there at 3:00, and when I tried to calm myself down with cable, I discovered that it all had no sound. I got up, scrounged coffee, took a cab over where I had a really entertaining cab driver who espoused, with no apparent irony, fundamentalist christian views and left-wing conspiracy theories. Had the very good meeting--I'll let you know when it'll be on C-span!--and because I was so entertained by what I had heard to date, had the cab driver meet from before drive me to the airport where I heard about how the CIA imported drugs to kill and control African American, and how the street dealers are going to hell for eternity for doing the work they do. I had not had any lunch at the reception because I had to talk to a bunch of different authors, and the line for food was too long, so I grabbed a coffee and cookie at Starbucks, and got on my plane. The plane was a two-decker airbus, completely filled, with half the people consisting of German tourists who didn't speak English, short six flight attendants, and I got a middle seat, not an aisle or a window. The German tourists didn't understand why there was no food and why they couldn't stand up during takeoff, which the sparse flight attendants had to explain to each one individually. Keep in mind that by this point, I hadn't eaten anything except some sugar and caffeine in 24 hours and had not had much sleep for two days. They started to show "Hitch" with Will Smith, and as I was too wiped to read the ms I brought, I started to watch--while Will Smith is no Brendan Fraser, who is my favorite star of airplane movies, it was light and fun. They stop the picture, announce they made a mistake, and instead start playing "Million Dollar Baby". This is a movie I want to see, but with its combination of father-daughter relationships, damaged hopes, Irish poetry, and disability and death, I was crying hard by half way through. I took off the headphones, closed my eyes, and started listening to my ipod, while the defense contractor next to me very kindly gave me the cocktail napkin from his drink for a tissue, and thankfully didn't ask me why I was crying, because I would have cried more. I got home, made a salad, and slept for 10 hours.

As I am now on the market for a car (in the sense of deciding what kind of Honda I am going to buy), I have a tendency to look at every make and model that passes more closely than I might normally. I was driving back from lunch, and saw a Mercedes turbodeisel with a W sticker on it, and thought, "Well, that's who should have a W sticker, because he is clearly looking out for their interests." I then noticed that their plate holder read "Ayn Rand", which I found hilarious, mostly because Ayn Rand is always funny. I considered the idea of rear ending them with my Pontiac because it might be a way for my Pontiac, which has hitherto not distinguishes itself particularly in any way, to go out in a blaze of glory. I held back, but I was very very tempted.